Ep 173 || We Answer Seven Seller Questions and Revisit eBay Employee and Seller, Stephen Weller

[podcast_team]

Griff revisits eBay seller and eBay employee Stephen Weller to get an update on how his business is going. And Rebecca returns to help answer seven questions on changing payment options, visual search, uploading a return label, and filtering our undesired results from a keyword search.

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Keyword search (video games lot) with excluded words (pick,choose,choice)

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Rebecca: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Stephen: "It's definitely a, a tough one. Obviously working, we'll call it nine to five. You definitely have to maintain composure during those times and leave your business behind. And then at nighttime, after I put my kids to bed and things like that, I bust out the site hustle."

Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.

Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration, you need to start and run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 173. Well, welcome back to the fold, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Thank you, Griff. And is it too late? Can I still say Happy New Year?

Griff: No, of course not.

Rebecca: Well Happy New Year to you and to all our listeners as well.

Griff: Dare I ask, how was your new, New Year's?

Rebecca: My Holiday, my New Year's you know, it was nice. It was quiet. I was not sad to say goodbye to 2021, but I'm excited for ’22.

Griff: Optimism suits you my dear.

Rebecca: optimism looks great on me. How about you Griff.

Griff: Oh, it was fantastic. I had a little noise maker and a little party hat and I sat in my little recliner chair with my TV dinner and on a tray in front of the TV. Of course I fell asleep before. Oh, who was it? This year? It was Anderson Cooper. And, uh, who was the other guy who got in trouble?

Rebecca: Ryan Seacrest?

Griff: Not, oh no. The other guy said rude things about Ryan Seacrest.

Griff: Was that Andy Cohen? Who was that?

Rebecca: I don't know. I have to admit, I have not watched the ball drop in years.

Griff: Yeah. Well, I missed that all. I was snoring

Rebecca: I don't know. Why do I have this feeling you were actually dancing on tables with lampshades on your head.

Griff: In my mind, perhaps.

Rebecca: Well, Griff. Enough about New Year's and dancing on tables. Who are our guests this week?

Griff: Well, we have one guest and he's a return guest. He's an eBay employee, Stephen Weller. And I like to check in with Stephen because not only does he work full time for eBay, but he sells full time on eBay. And I don't know how he does it. We're gonna find out how he's been doing. And when I say sell, he sells thousands of items a month. That's right.

Rebecca: That's right.He does. He's often our top seller here isn't he.

Griff: He''s unapproachable. So we always run a board here. Which employees are selling the most. And I usually come in second or third but it's like on at base camp and he's ascended to Everest. I'll never get up there.

Rebecca: It is impressive. Well, that sounds like it'll be a really interesting conversation.

Griff: Yes. I hope so.

Rebecca: There's no news this week. I'm sorry. But you know, I took a look at the question pile and there are a whole lot of questions that have come in.

Griff: I know, I think my plan worked.

Rebecca: Plan. What, what is this plan?

Griff: Well, it was more of a threat than a plan. I thought you knew about this.

Rebecca: Griff. What did you do?

Griff: Oh, nothing. Nothing. Really? Nothing at all. The good thing is it worked.

Rebecca: I don't even wanna know, not gonna ask moving on. Okay. It sounds like maybe I should go back and listen to a couple of the past episodes.

Griff: Oh no, no, you don't have to do that. There's no time. You don't wanna do that.

Rebecca: Well, so we do have a lot of questions to answer this week. And so in the interest of time, maybe we should go ahead and get to our guest. And in the meantime, I'll flip through the stack and I'll select the best ones that come up for today.

Griff: Oh, that sounds good. It''ll give you something to do and take your mind off my plan. I'll see you in a few minutes.

Rebecca: All right. I'll be back.

Griff: We do have a lot of employees at eBay who sell, I'm one of them. It keeps us in the game, lets us see firsthand what it's like to what we call in the business, eat the dog food, use the product. I like to think I sell a lot. I think our next guest probably sells more than I do. We'll find out how his business is going. Welcome back to the podcast. Senior Business Development Manager at eBay. Stephen Weller.

Hi Stephen.

Stephen: Hey Griff, how's it going?

Griff: Great. I'm so glad to talk to you again. We don't get a chance to really talk in between podcast episodes.

Stephen: Yeah, no, we definitely should do that more often.

Griff: So I wanna do a little check in. We talked to you, I believe a few months ago. How's business been in the last few months?

Stephen: Business has been great for me. Um, actually in Q4 I'm up 40% year over year.

Griff: Wow. Remind everyone what it is that you like to sell.

Stephen: So I sell Disneyana, like Disney pins and collectables and Funko Pops. Even some sneakers.

Griff: How's the sneaker business?

Stephen: Sneaker business is really good right now on eBay specifically.

Griff: What do you focus on for example, for sneakers? Is it just general or do you look for high end hard to find stuff?

Stephen: I do a lot of the harder find releases. The ones that are hard to get and they end up doing better.

Griff: You also work at eBay full time and it sounds like you sell full time, how do you balance those two?

Stephen: It's definitely a tough one. Obviously working we'll call it nine to five. You definitely have to maintain composure during those times and leave your business behind. And then at nighttime, after I put my kids to bed and things like that, I bust out the side hustle.

Griff: Okay. But It doesn't sound like you have any other free time.

Rebecca: I definitely sleep less than most people do, but it's okay. It's a good drive and it helps me provide for my family and allows to have a lot of fun.

Griff: How does what you do for eBay drive how you sell?

Stephen: Oh, the two are definitely correlated because I'm doing business development. I bring on new sellers to the platform and partnerships and things like that. And so by me being a seller and knowing what they want, it helps me do my job as well. It helps me by the customer by being one.

Griff: Do the customers that you talk to, do they understand that you're also a seller?

Stephen: Yeah. It usually comes up they'll ask me tips or tricks and they'll like, wow, you really know this. And I'll say, yeah, it's because I am one of you. And, definitely, it's a lot of fun to surprise them and know things and give them tips and tricks that you don't find in, you know, in any kind of book you'd read anywhere or YouTube video you'd watch.

Griff: Can you think of an example of a bit of advice or a tip or a trick that you've given a seller recently?

Stephen: I talked about dropping off on time. A lot of people, what they'll do is they'll drop off a package at say four o'clock and they're excited they beat the cutoff time at 5:30 when the store closes or post office closes. But the pickup for the post office or that store might have been at 2:30. And so I told them how to check with the post office or the, the place to drop off ups store FedEx and find out when the actual cutoff time is and that we get it out before then. And you actually will get your package out to your customer a day or two in advance.

Griff: I know that my local post office, I've asked them and the cutoff time is five o'clock when they're open. So I operate accordingly if I'm gonna drop something off, but it's true. There's one of the street mailboxes that's literally just a few blocks away from my house and I'm tempted sometimes to stick like a first class package in it. But if you look closely, they don't pick up till three. And by the time they get to the post office, it's after five.

Stephen: Yep, exactly. Now that one or two days may make a difference. Whether the customer comes back and buys from you again.

Griff: Now, how does what you do at eBay color, how you sell? The knowledge that you have from being inside of eBay, does it impact or shape the way that you run a business on eBay?

Stephen: It does a little bit. I mean, it helps me with, you know, best practices and things like that, whether it's titles or user images, but there's no secret sauce per se. I don't have inside information on how to make my listings do better or anything like that. But I definitely do, you know, standard operating procedures and best practices.

Griff: I noticed that someone's keeping track of people who work at eBay and who also sell on eBay. And I forget who's doing that, but there's a little list of who sells the most items who sells the gross. Are you familiar with this list? And if so, where are you on the list?

Stephen: I'm number one worldwide.

Griff: Curses Foiled again.

Stephen: Yeah. It's a lot of fun. It's fun to see my name come up on the list and it's by items, but, I definitely do a lot in dollars as well.

Griff: Can you hint at that? Or we don't have to have that if you don't want.

Stephen: No, it's OK. You know, this year I I've already crossed over six figures in sales and then, over 5,000 items.

Griff: Six figures, I'll never beat this. How many items?

Stephen: Almost 5,000.

Griff: Geez. How big is your operation at home.

Stephen: It's about half my garage. And to be honest with you, probably the next three or four weeks, I'll be maybe possibly renting a warehouse.

Griff: If you rent a warehouse, will you have to start hiring people?

Stephen: I don't think I'm there yet. It's more of just being able to be organized and set up systems better for myself. So that way I'm more efficient because right now, taking up the half garage is not allowing me to be as efficient as possible. And then I could actually spend less time doing more. If I had a bigger space.

Griff: How much time do you spend sourcing stuff to sell on eBay?

Stephen: Just a few hours a a day. I remember a couple hours a day, I should say. So at nighttime, when I'm doing stuff, I'll, I'll look for new product or I'll buy things. Or if I'm out at a Target or a Walmart, I'll get something or on Shop Disney, looking for something for my sons or my daughters, I'll I'll look for other things too and stuff. So I'm always sourcing. I was at Target the other day and had to get some diapers and wipes and ended up walking out with four Funko Pops and it paid for the diapers and wipes.

Griff: Always thinking. Well, Stephen, I hope that the success you're experiencing is being experienced by a whole wide range of sellers. I assume it is. But we'll check in with you again in well, maybe about three to six months and see how business has been here at the start of 2022 and what you notice from market trends. So right now it looks like sneakers and Funko pops and Disneyana are doing well.

Stephen: Yeah. All collectibles in general cards, comics, Funko Pop, vinyl, all that good stuff. Anything people collect is doing really well right now on eBay.

Griff: Fantastic. Stephen, it's always a joy to talk to you and continued success. We'll see you someday back in the office I hope.

Stephen: I hope so too, Griff. It will be great to see you again.

Griff: Stephen Weller, Senior Business Development Manager here at eBay, and he also sells on eBay. Oh, by the way, I forgot to ask for your user ID on eBay.

Stephen: User ID is subliminalsuzi, one word.

Griff: subliminalsuzi. I won't ask where that comes from.

Stephen: That is a whole other story for another day.

Griff: Good. We'll save it for the next time you're on. And we'll put a link to Steven's store in our transcript for this episode.

Stephen: Thanks Griff.

Rebecca: You've got questions.

Griff: Guess what? We've got answers. And boy, we have a lot of questions. I'm counting what you picked out here. Let's see. Six, seven questions?

Rebecca: I think it's seven and I wonder why there were so many to choose from this week.

Griff: Rebecca. It's a new year's miracle. Our first question is a call into our voice line. Why don't we take a listen and hear what he says?

Caller: Hey Griff, recently when I was listing an item on my phone, I see turn easy pricing. I do not recall getting this prompt on my desktop. Is it an old item that as I've binge to listen the first 170 podcasts I might have dozed off and missed that information? Or is it something new? In either case what's the skinny? Is it for high end, high volume users or the forgetful list it and forget it user? Enjoy the podcast, Griff Brian and the girl next door Rebecca, this is David from Friends of the Ben Brook Library.

Griff: Okay. There it is.

Rebecca: Girl next door. I've never been so flattered in my life. I've always wanted to be the girl next door.

Griff: Yeah, me too.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh. That was great. Thanks David.

Griff: So,, Rebecca, do you know anything about easy pricing?

Rebecca: You know, Griff? I have haven't I usually list on my desktop I have to admit I have never come across this prompt. What is easy pricing?

Griff: I have to admit, I didn't know it until I saw it a few months ago. And when you list an item on the mobile app, it'll prompt you. If it's a fixed price item, do you want to use easy pricing for this? And what it is is you can set a certain amount that will discount on a regular cadence, like every five days or so. It'll reduce the price by X percent. It's something that I tend to do manually with my listings. That's my strategy. I'll start them high, the fixed price. And when I start getting some interest, then I'll lower the price just a little bit to like make it a little more, you know, come here. It's kind of the opposite of sending Best Offers, but that's what David's saying. It's a cool feature. You can just say, no, I don't want to use it. It's not available on the desktop, but it is available on the app. And a question if you refuse to use it after a while, the prompt seems to disappear. In talking with our Product Team, It's something that is meant for the new or occasional seller to reconsider their price automatically. So they get the items sold, but any seller who sees it can use it and you can use it for any fixed price item. So David doesn't matter if it's high end or low end, if you see it and you wanna test it out, try it out, see what you think. You can set the criteria, how much and which, you know, how long, the period of days.

Rebecca: Yeah, that was gonna be my question. Like can you set the number of days? How often, how many days in between the reductions and the percentage of reduction?

Griff: Yes. You do that. And then you can set a base price stop when you get to this price.

Rebecca: That's awesome. It's like a very set it and forget it to make it really easy to give discounts to your buyers, right?

Stephen: It's like a reverse auction.

Rebecca: Ah, that's kinda cool. I'm gonna have to.

Griff: It's like, you know what it is? It's Filene's Basement. You probably don't know what that is.

Rebecca: I do know what Filene's is. It was very famous store in New York city.

Griff: It had easy pricing. Well, that one I know is in Boston and Filene's Basement, I remember I used to buy things. You'd go in and they'd be on a rack and every week they'd get discounted. So you'd come back to see, did it, you know, is it 10% off this week? And they would easy price everything until it sold.

Rebecca: Oh, interesting.

Griff: It was pretty cool. Yeah.

Rebecca: All right. I just Googled it. You're right. It was Boston, not New York. Somewhere in the Northeast.

Griff: It's across the street from (inaudible) and if you're from Boston or New England and you're my age, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Our next question was one that John sent to podcast@ebay.com. And it's a very interesting question. Would you like to read it and then we'll talk about it?

Rebecca: Yeah, I'd be happy to. John asks. Hi Griff and Brian and Rebecca Love the podcast. We love you too John. When I'm taking a return, I notice that there is an option during the process for providing the buyer with a return postage label that will let me upload my own label. I can see the potential benefits of this, but I don't quite understand how to do this. Could you explain how a seller like me can get their own label to upload?

Griff: Yeah, it's, it's actually, I did some research when I got this question and it's actually pretty easy in some cases. So if you have an account with one of the carriers, for example, you can explore their websites and find out how you can get a return label. It's usually done manually for like say, if you have an order and you want to provide the label as opposed to eBay providing it, you can purchase a return label. Like with UPS, you can purchase one and print it out as a PDF, save it as a PDF and then you can upload it. And that will count as the label, as opposed to EBAs default where, they will send the buyer the label. You get really good rates with eBay when you use their return label. And the vast majority of sellers use that. But if you wanna explore the option of uploading your own label, do so, see if it works for you. There are also services like Stamps.com and Ship Station, where if you're using their platform to do all of your eBay labels, like through their API, you can connect your account with Stamps.com for example, and you can use them entirely. They actually make it really easy to PDF a label and then upload it during the return process at eBay. But that's what that means. And it's, it's usually something that a seller or a merchant will explore on their own. We don't really provide a lot of information, but those companies do have options. You should explore them.

Rebecca: All right. Good to know. Thanks. So our third question also came into podcast@ebay.com from eBay seller, Judith.

Griff: Oh, Judith. She always writes in. I love you Judith!

Rebecca: Our loyal listener, Judith. And she writes, hi Griff. I never had a single problem being converted to Managed Payments, but now it's like, I have lost control over the process. By that, I mean, I want my monthly eBay store fee, my other eBay invoices, my shipping label costs, et cetera, my expenses and my net payments from sales, her income to go all to, into the same bank account. This would make it much easier for me, but that's not happening now. Some debits go to credit card and I am buying my shipping labels via a PayPal, which is backed up by a credit card. Could you help me if possible, consolidate all of these transactions into one single bank account? Thanks!

Griff: Judith. Judith, Judith. Well, thanks for the question. It's a great opportunity to explain this in case there's other sellers who aren't aware of how you can do this, Because Rebecca changing your funding method for eBay fees and changing your label funding method for eBay label postage, they are two separate settings, they can be managed from the same page in Seller Hub. If you go to Seller Hub and then click the Payments tab, then click on the left hand side in the navigation click on Payout Settings. From there, you click on the Edit link next to your current payment method and voila! This whole page opens up. It takes you to the Payments page, which will show you all your current payment methods on file with eBay, including bank accounts, credit, or debit cards and your one PayPal account. So below the existing funding methods on your account, there is a box for add payment option. If you wanna add a second bank account or a credit or debit card, you click this option and then follow the instructions. I know it's a little...

Rebecca: You can see the puzzled look on my face.

Griff: yeah. I saw that through the glass and I'm thinking, oh man, maybe I'm not explaining this. Well, why, what are you thinking?

Rebecca: No. I'm I think you are explaining it well, it just seems like a lot of steps and I'm just trying to follow it along. 1, 2, 3.

Griff: Yeah. If I could do screenshots, it makes it easy. And I think once you're on the page, it's actually really clear to see. Also Judith, If there are bank accounts or credit or debit cards you wish to remove from your eBay Payments account, you can delete them on this page as well. Finally, you can assign which of the bank accounts or credit or debit cards you wish to be your default payment method for all your eBay selling fees by clicking the manage link for that box, for that payment method of your choice. When you do that, you'll see, a little popup window and there's a toggle option. It says preferred for selling cost will charge this account first for any outstanding cost before we try other payment methods on file. Like say you just want everything to be a bank account which it sounds like she wants. Right? So if your existing bank account that you want isn't on that page, you would add it. And then you would toggle that accounts option to make it your default payment account. And it will cover all of your eBay fees. So if you pay Insertion Fees, if you pay Final Value Fees, Subscription Fees, all of those get covered in that account of your choice. And if you have another account and it's currently set as the default its toggle as the default payment account, it will toggle off automatically. If you toggle an another account on. I wish that was clearer because I didn't quite understand that when I was trying it, but I figured it out. And if you select a credit or debit card, that's already on your account as your default method of paying fees, you have to re-verify that card before you can change it to your default fee payment option. Now, Judith, your PayPal email address for your PayPal account can be used for only two purposes on eBay to purchase items and to pay for eBay labels. It cannot be used as a funding method for eBay selling fees. However, any debit or credit cards you place in your payment section can also be used to purchase items on eBay at checkout, they'll be provided to you as a buyer, as an option. You can change how your eBay Labels get funded during the print label flow. So it's only available when you're actually printing a label, but once you change it, it toggles to that, unless you change it in the future. The funding options are at the very bottom of the first page. When you select print a label for a single label and on the second review page, when you select two or more labels for batch printing, am I going too far?

Rebecca: Whew. I mean, we're pretty far down the rabbit hole here?

Griff: Well, again, if I had screenshots, I could show you, but maybe I'll cut them out and put them up on the transcript. I'll see if Brian can do that. And your options for paying for your labels are either pending payouts, that's the funds that have come in and they're usually held for a day or two. I always have some pending payouts so that's what I use. Or you can use your PayPal account. And if you select pending payouts and there are no pending funds available for printing a label, the funds will come from that default funding method, bank account, credit or debit card that you selected for paying your eBay fees. If you select your PayPal account, the funds will come from your PayPal account. And I think I can't remember, because I did this once and I'm not going back to try it, but I think you can select what the funding method is for PayPal. You know, when you're in your PayPal account, you say, I want to use one of these accounts.

Rebecca: Yeah. You should be able to do that.

Griff: Yes. So there you go.

Rebecca: So I think the upshot for Judith is that it is actually possible to have all of those selling fees, including labels coming from the one bank account. There's a little work to do on her end to set it up on eBay and on pay PayPal, to make sure that she's using both bank accounts, the one email address, everything as the same source.

Griff: Thank you for pointing that out. If you have that same bank account registered on your PayPal account, you can select that one. If you want to use PayPal for funding out of that bank account, right. I guess you can do it from one account. It's just, it's not easy.

Rebecca: You got some work to do. And you know, if you use a debit card tied to that bank account as well, like anyway, Judith, good luck. Call us back!

Griff: The reason why I'm so glad that Judith asked that question because not only because it gave me a chance to talk about it on, you know, endlessly, but my payments accounts were a mess. There were a bunch of credit cards in there. I like expired. So It gave me a chance to clean 'em up.

Rebecca: That's great. So basically Judith got you to do your homework. I like it.

Griff: Yes, she did. Thank you, Judith. Okay. Question number four was also sent into podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller GamesToysApparel. I wonder what they sell. And he says, hi gang. I currently have an eBay store where I sell a little bit of everything, but I'm looking to open a second store where I can sell my niche items. Has eBay considered making it a little easier on mobile to sign in and out of one account and go to the next versus having to log in and out of each store? It would make it a little easier for those of us that have multiple accounts and use their phone to list and take pictures. Like if there was a way to just click your profile and toggle back and forth. Oh, I dunno. For instance, Instagram allows you to have multiple profiles, but you're already logged into them all. And you just flip to the account you'd like to be in. Thanks. I love listening to the podcast while I list my items, longtime listener, keep up the work. GamesToysApparel. That's the user ID.

Rebecca: Well, thanks GamesToysApparel. We actually have seen this request before currently. However, there aren't any plans for a one step toggle between eBay accounts in the mobile app. And in fact, it is pretty hard. It's almost impossible to switch between eBay accounts in the mobile app.

Griff: Yeah, I tried it. It ain't easy.

Rebecca: It ain't, yes, it can be done on desktop using a web browser, but you have to sign out of one account and then sign back in with another, however we have passed your suggestion along to the product team for their consideration.

Griff: Yeah. And we like to do that.

Rebecca: Absolutely. And then here's a hint I use when I have two accounts in a simultaneous website of some sort, I will have one account in one type of browser. This works best on desktop. I'll have one account logged in on one browser like a safari, and I'll have another account logged in, in another browser, like say a Chrome. Again, this is more of a desktop solution, but maybe somebody out there listening will find it useful. And that way I can at least just toggle back and forth on my computer or even in my web browsers on my phone, instead of having to log back and forth, it's not a perfect workaround, but maybe it'll help somebody.

Griff: Another workaround is you could get a second phone and carry two phones around. But you know, my question to you, GamesToysApparel is, or any other seller considering a second or third eBay account and stores, why? Your subscription costs are gonna be doubled. There are no cross promotion tools or options for two or more stores, and you're gonna have to manage each one separately. And that's a lot of work just doing one. The work in running two more stores is double or triple managing just one. And I don't just, I just don't think there's a benefit. My suggestions by the way, to sellers with a varied type of inventory and they say, Hey, I, should I open a second store? As they say, no, just create a main store category hierarchy to sort merchandise of different types inside that store category. And then you get the, to cross promote within your store because never make the assumption that somebody may be looking for, you know, a little girl's party dress, but they also want, I dunno, a muffler.

Rebecca: It's entirely possible. The other thing is that, you know, if you open up a new store, you lose out on all the goodness that you've built up in your existing store in terms of feedback and history, relationships with buyers and all of those benefits.

Griff: And you're, you're gonna be faced with limits. So your new account will be considered a new account. Yeah. It's not recommended.

Rebecca: Exactly well on to our fifth question. And there's a lot of questions this week so on to our fifth question. And this is from eBay seller, Rex. Rex wrote Hello, thanks for a great podcast that we look forward to listening to each week. We have always sold our old tech on eBay for years, but only in 2020 after restricted travel, did we start going to estate sales for something to do. Then guess what? We had more stuff to sell. So we are accidental resellers now. You know, that happens a lot to people Griff.

Griff: Oh yes. You run outta space really quick.And cash.

Rebecca: Hopefully not. Cause they're making all those sales. Okay. All right. Enough goofing around. So Rex goes on to say, the question we are trying to figure out how to change our linked PayPal account in eBay. Wait,

Rebecca: Dejavu. How about this? Did I choose these questions? I did actually. I think that it's good to have these related topics.

Griff: There's a method to the madness. There is, there is.

Rebecca: Currently, we are still linked to a personal PayPal account that was set up a long time ago as a buyer account. Now we would like to change it to be linked to a business PayPal account. Since we have created an LLC and want to update our records properly. Thanks from Rex.

Griff: Although we pretty much answered this already for Judith earlier, Rex, it bears a repeat, I think because it gives me the opportunity to show you that there are two ways, two! To reach the page for changing the PayPal account on file with eBay. So for example, with Judith, we directed her to Seller Hub for you re we're gonna give you a special, different way. We'll point you to My eBay on the top of an eBay page. And once you clicked it, click on the Account tab and then Payment Information and then Payments and voila! You're on the same page. And once you're there, you look for the PayPal section, click for your existing PayPal account, then add your other PayPal accounts, email address. And now you're linked.

Rebecca: Done and dusted.

Griff: Keep in mind though that that will be the account that will show up. If you're buying on eBay, you're changing that there's only one account at any given time for each eBay account. So if that's an account that you're okay using for buying, great. You can also set it up that, you can have credit cards on file with eBay and credit or debit cards that you can use to purchase that are not related to PayPal. So you have that option and you can add Google Pay, Apple Pay. I use Apple Pay.

Rebecca: When you have the choice when you're in the purchase flow. I pulled this next question because it caught me by surprise. eBay seller Kimberly asked. Hello Griff. Thank you for continuing your podcast. I enjoy listening. My question is why did eBay take off the search by photo? I know that I can use Google for the same type of feature, but it was great to find items right on eBay. eBay's photo search was a bit more accurate and was a big time saver. Please suggest it's return soon. All the best Kimberly. What, what is Kimberly talking about here?

Griff: Okay. So in the research for this, I confess, I had no idea that what we call Visual Search, it was launched back in 2017, was removed from the app, but I checked my iPhone and indeed it is no longer there. So concerned me, I contacted at our Product Team and they informed me that because of some inconsistencies that popped up with the feature at the end of December, they had temporarily removed it from the app and they had to do it quickly because they didn't want these inconsistencies to keep showing up, but they're working to get it back, fixed ASAP. So that version of the Visual Search, they should have it back up and running very soon. But he also told me that they actually planned to relaunch a new and improved version of Visual Search later this year in 2022. So stay tuned for that. And yes, it did work really well and it worked a lot better than Google's. I admit it. So, yeah, so it worked really well, but Kimberly, thank you for noticing.

Rebecca: Great. Thank and thanks for hunting that down Griff. All right. Our very last question for this week is actually from a buyer, eBay buyer, Kevin, and he is not happy. Kevin emailed podcast@ebay.com and he says... So I buy a ton from eBay, but I've noticed this extremely annoying trend more and more lately. Why is eBay allowing some sellers to clog up search results for video games, by listing a bunch of games that actually aren't related at all? It's beyond frustrating as a buyer. I rarely sell, but I buy multiple items a week. And truthfully I'm thinking I'll check elsewhere instead of these manipulative listings that never have anything in their inventory. So they clog the top results with their filler games. Please, can we stop this?

Griff: So just as a little backstory, I did research what he was talking about and what he was saying was that when he searches and he was specifically using the words video games lot. So he was looking for bargains, you know, on, on a lot of video games. You know, different types, four or five. But there are sellers in that category who are offering multi variations for video games. And there's a lot of them. So when I used his search, video games lot, I was getting 98,000 returns. But Kevin, although we can't prevent sellers from listing multi variation or choice listings in this category, you as a buyer can filter most of them out of your return results by just tailoring your keyword search. And there's a few ways to do this. First way is to figure out, of course, what words you are gonna take out. I've done the work for you on this one. I figured out which words you can use that will, they're called excluded words. So any titles with these excluded words in them won't show up in your results. Once you know that you can go to the search box on the top of any eBay page, or you can do this also in the app and you type video games lot Word space word, and then a space, and then a hyphen, otherwise known as a minus sign and then a parenthesis left parenthesis. And you can, and I put the word, pick comma, choose comma choice, and then a closed parentheses, no spaces inside the parentheses. And this will filter out any listing that have the words pick or choose or choice in the title, my research showed that most of these multi variation listings have those words. You can also accomplish the same filter using the advanced search feature on the desktop app, by adding each word, pick, choose, and choice into the excluded words box. The eBay Mobile app does not have the advanced search feature. From within the app you would need to type what I just told you above, which is the text string video games lot with minus in parentheses pick, choose, choice. Now using your category as an example, video games, lot, those three keywords showed about 98,000 results. But what I put the excluded words, pick, choose, and choice into the same string. The result was only 5,000. So that's a drastic filtering of the listings. And you, Kevin May find other examples of listings that are not what you seek determine if the seller has a search word and the title for that listing and included in your excluded words, and then we'll filter those out as well. And then finally, so you don't have to do this work over and over, save that search as a favorite search so you can access it faster in the future. You can also select the search from your recent searches on the app and save it as a favorite from there as well.

Rebecca: You know, over the years, Griff, it's been pretty amazing how searching has really become a skill that we've all acquired. I mean, I've learned to do a lot of similar searching like this only in the major search engines like Google that I use. One thing that I often do in Google that I believe is the right way and that it works when I have a particular phrase that I'm looking for. I put it in quotation marks and that way it is on the entire phrase and not just each word separately.

Griff: And that's still the case in eBay. Although we don't, we don't really publish a, you know, promote it in the advanced search. You can select an option that will say these keywords in this order. But when eBay first started, and for many years afterwards, the search function on eBay was really easy to configure, but you had to know a lot of things. We actually used what was called a wild card so you could put an asterisks at the end or in the beginning of a word, maybe you wanted Barbie spelled with a Y and Barbie spelled with IE. You just put a Barb with an asterisk, right? Well, that is no longer possible.

Rebecca: Cuz you'd also get barbell and barber as a result there. Right?

Griff: Barbie with a barbell. Could be interesting. But what happened, we also had other options where there were these permutations where you could look for different combinations and it got more and more confusing. And if you happen to have an old copy of the official eBay Bible by Griff Griff Griffith, Jim Griffith you can find it in the remainder bins across America.

Rebecca: I have a copy. Oh, guess where I bought it?

Griff: A remainder bin?

Rebecca: On eBay !

Griff: On eBay. Good for you. It's entirely outta date, but there's a whole explanation of how the search worked at the time. And now it's much simpler, but you there's still a few things you can do.

Rebecca: I think we did a good job answering a bunch of questions.

Griff: I do too. Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Oh my pleasure. And if you want to join the fund here on eBay For Business, you can call us at (888) 723-4630.

Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. David. Thank you so much for calling that number. If only more people would, if they don't call it, I may resort to some passive aggressive ploy of saying, well, that's it. The podcast is on hiatus! You can call that hotline and prevent a hiatus any time of the day, any day of the week, leave a question or comment and we just might put it on the air. I don't be the boy who cried Wolf though.

Rebecca: And remember, if you are not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ ebay.com that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Now it's time for your Daily PodcastTo-do list.

Rebecca: Number one, check the Announcement Board for up to date Seller News.

Griff: Number two. Look, I know you're happy using your inkjet printer with tape over the label. I know, I understand It.

Rebecca: I saw your post on Facebook over the holiday about that yes, I did.

Griff: I got two different labels within a month, both kind of on the verge of being unreadable because they were a paper tapped to a box. So yeah, I'm not gonna stop banging the drum for thermal printers. So as I said last week, if you're dearly, beloved best partner, didn't get you a thermal printer, knock 'em on the head and say maybe next year, but in the meantime, go out and buy one.

Rebecca: And then here's another one, a new one for this year. Visit the eBay community pages at community.ebay.com and connect with other sellers, learn and share and you know, find out the latest of what's going on and what sellers are talking about.

Griff: Of course. And you should always check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you heard and to see the links we referenced during the episodes. So you can get to them fast. On our next episode. I have no idea where we're at. It's it's a blank slate. I'll have a better idea next week.

Rebecca: Yes. Folks. It's it's a mystery for now. It's a mystery. You won't wanna miss it.

Griff: Yeah. You won't wanna miss it.

Rebecca. We'd like to thank again, our guests this week, Stephen Weller, an eBayer also a Top Seller.

Griff: Yeah. The eBay for Business Podcast is produced in by Libsyn and podCast411.